


G is for Guilt

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:02:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1449520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Hanna visits Mona in Radley, she feels guilty and wonders whether Mona would ever have become A if she had been a better friend, and reflects on her friendships with her other friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	G is for Guilt

_2000:_

_Mona and Hanna are playing on the swings at Rosewood local park. Mona starts saying that she is bored and wants Hanna to get off the swing so she can have a go. But Hanna doesn’t want to. She only just got on there about five minutes ago, and Mona had half an hour. It’s her turn._

_“Well, I’m bored!” Mona snaps, before walking over to Hanna and pushing her off the swing. As Hanna lands flat on her ass, she hears a voice saying “That wasn’t a very nice thing to do.”_

_She looks up. It’s Spencer Hastings, and that new girl who just moved to town, Alison something. It was Alison who had spoken. Alison takes Hanna by the arm, says “Come on, come to Emily’s with us. I’ll get you cleaned up.”_

_For a moment, Hanna thinks that she should ask if Mona can come too, but then wonders why she should. Mona did just push her off the swing, after all. And she’s wanted to be friends with Spencer’s crowd for a while now, and now Alison is finally giving her the chance._

_As Alison puts her arm around Hanna and leads her away, for a moment Hanna thinks she sees her looking over her shoulder at Mona and smirking at her. Then Alison turns back towards Hanna, and Hanna decides she imagined it. Why would Alison have done that? She doesn’t even know Mona. Hanna doesn’t look back at Mona as she walks off to Emily’s with Spencer and Alison, although she feels like maybe she should. But it’s Alison, the girl who everyone in their class wants to be friends with, and she’s chosen Hanna. Besides, she’s still a bit mad at her._

_She decides to give it a few days and then go see Mona again. Maybe she’ll be able to persuade Alison to let her hang out with them as well._

 

She never had, of course. Instead, Hanna had stuck with Alison, Spencer, Aria and Emily after that and had never gone back to Mona. Over time, she more or less forgot that she and Mona had once been friends. Did Mona still remember any of that? Did her dislike of Alison, and resentment of Hanna’s friendships with the others, go back so far?

Hanna does still remember the day Mona was referring to when she talked about how Hanna had thrown up on the trampoline that time and had stood up and taken a bow. The crazy thing about that was, at the time it had happened, Hanna had thought to herself “What would Ali do?” and that had been the answer that she had come up with. Ali probably would have done something like that and would have pulled it off, but Hanna was amazed that she had.

If Hanna had just listened more to Mona even when she thought Mona’s problems with Noel were minor, or spent more time with her, would any of this ever have happened? Looking back, Hanna can’t think why Mona did want to be friends with her. Right now, as she sits with Mona in the hospital, she wonders why any of her friends did. Take Aria. When Emily got that text telling her that A – Mona, Hanna corrects herself – would let Emily go free if she clued Ella in on the fact that Aria was seeing Ezra, she’d refused to do it. Mona had really been singling Emily out at that time, and yet she’d chosen not to take that way out. And what had Hanna done when given the same choice? She’d given Ella those stupid tickets to the same exhibition Ezra was taking Aria to. Okay, so Caleb had tampered with her car so she never actually caught them together, and Aria had said afterwards that she didn’t blame her, since if it was just about exposing her and Ezra, all A had to do was send the ticket to Ella herself, where by getting Hanna to do it, she was trying to cause trouble between them. (How much more sense that makes, now Hanna knows that Mona is A.) Emily had walked away from it, and Hanna had tried to do it.

Hanna doesn’t even think that Emily even knew what was going on back then, just that Aria had stopped talking to her for some reason. She wouldn’t have made the connection. And Aria never said anything back when Emily got that text, but Hanna remembered, and felt like a crappy friend all over again.

And then there was Lucas. Hanna had really thought they’d got past the whole thing of him liking her and become good friends. He’d even told her what a good friend she was after that whole double date thing where she’d convinced Danielle she was into Caleb even though she didn’t want to get back together with him then. And yet he hadn’t felt he could talk to her about his gambling problem.

“Maybe he would have felt able to talk to you if it hadn’t been your boyfriend’s money he was stealing,” Spencer had pointed out, but Hanna wasn’t convinced. Lucas had confessed that to Caleb and Hanna in the end, it was all out in the open, and yet he was still shutting Hanna out.

“You’re a better friend than you think you are, Hanna,” Spencer tries to tell her. “Look at the way you arranged for Emily to have that last night with Maya. And Lucas was right, you were a good friend to him over the date. And I know you tried to help me by talking to Toby for me when he came back after Jenna’s operation. Mona wanted to come between us all. By thinking that way, you’re letting her.”

When Hanna was with Spencer and the others, it was easier for her to accept that. But sitting opposite Mona, wondering if things would ever have got to this point if Hanna had spent more time with her rather than neglecting her last year, she’s no longer sure that’s true.


End file.
